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/ 12 January 2005
World number-four gold miner Gold Fields on Tuesday indicated that no viable alternative has emerged from recent talks and that it continues to pursue other alternatives other than rival Harmony’s offer. It is too soon to have expected a viable solution to emerge, Harmony marketing director Ferdi Dippenaar said.
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/ 12 January 2005
South Africa’s real retail sales rose by a record 12,8% year-on-year (y/y) in September after a revised 11,9% y/y increase (original estimate was 11,7% y/y) in September, Statistics South Africa said on Thursday. This brought real retail sales growth for the first 10 months to 9,9% y/y.
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/ 12 January 2005
The influential chairperson of Nigeria’s ruling party has submitted his resignation under pressure from President Olusegun Obasanjo, after warning the head of state that his government is becoming unpopular and might be toppled in a coup. A newspaper quoted Audu Ogbeh as saying: "I am not in any contest for power with the president."
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/ 12 January 2005
Food and Allied Workers Union (Fawu) members will march to the Nestlé headquarters in Randburg on Friday following a wage talks deadlock, the union said on Tuesday. Marchers will request management to review negotiations in order to reach a settlement. About 2 200 workers of Nestlé and members of the union have been on strike since January 3, Fawu said.
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/ 12 January 2005
Russia’s state-controlled diamond company Alrosa has set a target of ,8-billion in diamond sales over 2005 and ,2-billion of that will be in rough diamonds, said Antwerp Facets, a news service for the Diamond High Council in Belgium. Should all these goods be exported, the figure will rival that expected of Botswana, the world’s leading diamond producer and exporter of rough diamonds.
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/ 12 January 2005
Nelson Mandela, supported by his wife, Graca, attended his son Makgatho’s Mandela’s memorial service at the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg on Tuesday. Makgatho (54), Mandela’s only surviving son, died of HIV/Aids on Thursday last week. In his sermon, Reverend Mvume Dandala, said ”that the first step to victory against Aids is not only to know one’s adversaries but to name one’s adversary”.
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/ 12 January 2005
North Korean men hoping to emulate their ”dear leader” Kim Jong-il by sporting a bouffant have been instructed to do their bit for socialism by cutting it off. North Korean state television is showing a series of programmes instructing shabbily coiffured men on the personal grooming required of a citizen of the vehemently anti-capitalist state.
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/ 12 January 2005
South Africa emerged as Africa’s main troubleshooter in 2004. Whether in the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire or even Sudan, South African president Thabo Mbeki’s intervention — though not always successful — was sought by the African Union (AU).
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/ 12 January 2005
The upgrade of South Africa’s country ceilings for foreign currency debt and bank deposits to Baa1 from Baa2 by international agency Moody’s Investors Service was a resounding acknowledgment that South Africa has got its policy mix right, says Colen Garrow, an economist at Brait.
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/ 12 January 2005
Nearly a third of the -million urgently requested by the United Nations for the Asian tsunami relief effort has now been received, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator said on Tuesday. Jan Egeland told the leading aid donors in Geneva that he had urged the speedy release of their government’s unprecedented -billion pledges.